Today is the day. Roses, welcome to Wazoo.
I gave Elspeth a cookie, strapped her into the backpack, grasped the all-purpose shovel we bought back in Dutch Country midUSA, and went to it. I dug the holes for the roses and then I went to digging a trench in our front yard for the hedge. I worked in close proximity to the street and I wondered what the drivers of the cars thought as they puffed exhaust in our direction.
PEEVISH THINGS: COTTAGE CHEESE, SMELL OF CANNED PEACHES, BRUSHING MY HAIR.This is what drivers saw: Unkempt woman talking to herself as she thrusts a shovel into the wide expanse of a front lawn. Runny-nosed child high up on unbrushed woman's back eating a cookie, happily unaware of her disheveled appearance.
PEEVISH THINGS: YOUNG APARTMENT RESIDENTS UP THE STREET WHO SQUEAL THEIR TIRES AT STOP SIGN AND HONK AT ME WHEN I BEND OVER TO DIG IN FRONT FLOWERBEDS.The residents of my neighborhood have probably drawn their own dire conclusions about my sanity already. I could feel drivers bulking last fall when I tromped out to the middle of our front lawn, armed with a wheelbarrow and piles of the Sunday newspaper. I was determined to kill enough sod for a cutting garden this summer. Wild-haired zinnias would take the place of plebeian grass! But then it was a windy day and the newspapers blew and fluttered as I scrambled for rocks to use as anchors. Merry and I scattered straw over this mess and then I covered the whole thing with a black pool tarp left behind by the previous owners of our big brick house.
It turns out that the tarp caught the sun in a blinding pool of light, and later that fall, in a fit of blindness, I ran outside and whipped off the tarp. So now, this spring, there is a faint circle in the grass as well as two long straw-newspaper graves. But mark my words, there will be zinnias.
PEEVISH THINGS: PRESCRIPTIVE BOOKS LIKE "MEN ARE FROM MARS. . ."; FOLLOWING DIRECTIONS; PEOPLE WHO MEASURE BEFORE THEY DIG.Elspeth was still content with her cookie so we went on and began to dig a trench for the Canadian hemlocks, which are languishing in the basement like unwelcome guests. Time to be a good hostess, I thought, as I put my weight on the good old Dutch. Digging up thick sod with a toddler on your back is good exercise, let me tell you. I not only eyeballed the site for the hedge but I actually paced it out before I started digging.
Martin pulled up with Merry, back from preschool. He got out of the car. I expected some laud, but instead Martin looked critically at my trench and shook his head.
PEEVISH THINGS: PEOPLE WHO TELL ME I AM WRONG."That is entirely the wrong place for the hedge," he said. I swear he gets this fetish for measurement and accuracy from his father, who will go absolutely cross-eyed at something one thousandth of a millimeter askew on wall that would have never, ever bothered me in a million years. (This makes him a class A builder, electrician, plumber--a job is well done in his hands.)
Add to this that God gave Martin enormous feet that are each exactly one foot long, and you've got the kind of obsessive measurer that bewilders the rest of us eyeballers.
"Then you do it," I said. He looked at me in some exasperation.
PEEVISH THINGS: PEOPLE WHO SEND CHILDREN TO SCHOOL WITH GREEN STUFF COMING OUT THEIR NOSES."Did you have fun at preschool?" I asked Merry, unstrapping Elsepth from my back.
Martin was already plotting out another line for the hedge with bricks.
"Her teachers told me she had green stuff coming out her nose," he said.
One look at her handkerchief confirmed this.
"We should call the city," said Martin, "To make sure we're not about to dig up a gas line."
Okay, uncle, uncle.
Since the hemlocks were clearly not destined to make it into the ground, I piled the girls into the house.
I took a nap, and then Elspeth and I planted the roses. Of course I didn't read the directions correctly and I am convinced now, after looking at the directions again, that I planted them wrong.
PEEVISH THINGS: PEOPLE WHO WAIT AROUND FOR SOMEONE TO DO SOMETHING FOR THEM WHEN THEY CAN DO IT THEMSELVES.Martin arrived home for dinner. I was flattened into a rocking chair. "I defrosted some ground turkey," I told him, "But I just don't know what to do with it."
After a delicious taco salad, I thanked Martin for dinner.
"Thank YOU," he said.
"For what?" I asked.
"For defrosting the turkey," he said.
"Any time." (Defrosting a tube of meat is hard work, but someone had to do it.)
PEEVISH THINGS: UNGRATEFUL PEOPLE.Fine, then. Thank you, Martin, for your feet and for loving to cook. Thank you for revelling in the crinkle of paper as you open an instruction booklet.
Thank you, fine compulsive Dutch gardeners, for making a good shovel.
And I'll just take care of it now: thank you, all obsessive people who love the metric system. Where would we be without your glum but perfect measurements?
